You'd think slipping into a red bathing suit for the new Baywatch movie would be a very simple task.

But, it certainly wasn't.

In the upcoming big screen adaptation of the lifeguard television series, Kelly Rohrbach stars as C.J. Parker, a role first played by Pamela Anderson on TV, opposite co-stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Zac Efron.

I caught up with Rohrbach last night at the Grand Wailea resort during the Maui Film Festival, where she and Everybody Wants Some!!'s Wyatt Russell were honored with this year's Rising Star Awards.

"It was a process," Rohrbach said of finding the right swimsuit. "The first time. we have retailored it and restructured it 10 different times...They wanted to revamp it and make it modern. They added zippers. At first there was a collar and we took that off so we sort of played around with it. It took us about a month to get it right."

Read

No surprise, but she shows off lots of thigh after settling on a suit that was high up on the hip. "I like that look to be honest, like that '90s vibe," said Rohrbach, 26, a former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model who was romantically linked to Leonardo DiCaprio last year. "It makes your legs look longer and your bum look better."

It took about an hour a day to put it on. Yes, an hour. "They had to glue it down," Rohrbach explained. "It was a whole process."

Getting in shape for the film—not that she was by any means out of shape—included running four or five times a week and doing sprinting sets on the beach, boxing and weight training.

As for a diet, Rohrbach was lucky. "I'm a pretty hefty eater, like really hefty," she said.

"I have to eat a lot to function, to stay alive," she added with a laugh. "So especially when we were working out more, I ended up eating like a T-bone steak every night for dinner because were doing so much muscle work."

Read

Efron was the most dedicated to the gym. "He obviously got in insane shape for the movie—insane!" Rohrbach said. "He was really disciplined and dedicated about it. We obviously had trainers help us and all that but by the time most of us got there, we were like, 'Eh, we'll work out next week.' He was on it."

As we know The Rock has said that the Baywatch movie will be raunchy. This ain't your grandfather'sDavid Hasselhoff's Baywatch (although he and Anderson have cameos in it.)